Data story · Fortunes
Billionaire fortunes that rose and fell, year by year.
Of 31 well-known fortunes on both the 2008 and 2009 Forbes lists, 28 were worth less in 2009. Twenty-six years of the list, one band per year, show that crash and much stranger shapes besides.
Every strip on this page is a real Fortunes strip from the Huezle app, drawn by the app’s own code. More about Fortunes.
How to read the strips
Each strip is one person. Each band is one year of the Forbes billionaires list, running from 2001 on the left to 2026 on the right. Pale mint means the person was not on that year’s list; the deeper the green, the bigger the fortune, up to a dark vault green for the richest people alive.
The colour is logarithmic: a fortune has to grow roughly ninefold to move from the pale end to the middle (about 13 billion dollars), and ninefold again to reach the dark end (about 120 billion). That keeps a 3-billion fortune and a 30-billion one visibly different. Fortunes of 1.4 billion or less draw at the palest shade, the same as a year off the list.
The fastest risers start pale
The biggest multiples belong to people who were not on the 2001 list at all, which is why their strips start pale and end dark.
- Off the list
- Billions
- Richest alive
- Off the list
- Billions
- Richest alive
A late, steep rise like that is easy to tell from an old fortune that grew steadily, which has colour across the whole width and simply darkens. Seventeen of the 49 people in the set are on all 26 lists.
2009: the year almost everyone fell
The 2009 list was compiled in the middle of the financial crisis, and it shows as a paler ninth band on many strips. Some of the falls were steep enough to cross half the ramp in a single year.
- Off the list
- Billions
- Richest alive
The reverse came in 2021. Of the 37 people on both the 2020 and 2021 lists, 35 rose, which is why so many strips take a visible step darker around the twenty-first band.
Collapses go back to pale
A fortune that falls far enough leaves the list, and the strip goes back to pale. Colour in the middle of a strip, with pale on both sides, is the shape of a boom and a bust.
- Off the list
- Billions
- Richest alive
- Off the list
- Billions
- Richest alive
Off the list and back
- Off the list
- Billions
- Richest alive
A pale band means “not on that year’s list”, not “worth nothing”. Forbes publishes a list of billionaires, so anyone below a billion, or whose fortune Forbes did not estimate that year, is simply absent. Families are listed the way Forbes lists them, so some strips are a family’s fortune rather than one person’s.
The rest of the set, steady dynasties and other fallen fortunes among them, is left for you to read in the Fortunes category. More money stories are on the best-performing stocks each year page and in the 2020 crash in colour.
Huezle shows you one fortune’s strip at a time and asks whose it is.
Download on the App StoreFree on iPhoneQuestions
How much did Elon Musk’s fortune grow?
On the Forbes list he goes from 2.0 billion dollars in 2012, his first year on it, to 24.6 billion in 2020, 151 billion in 2021 and 839 billion in 2026.
What does a pale year on a fortune strip mean?
That the person was not on that year’s Forbes billionaires list. It does not mean the fortune was zero. Fortunes of 1.4 billion or less are drawn at the same pale shade.
Why did so many fortunes drop in 2009?
The 2009 list was compiled during the financial crisis. Of the people here who were on both the 2008 and 2009 lists, 28 of 31 were worth less in 2009.
More guides
- How to read a century of presidential elections in colour.US presidential elections since 1900 drawn as strips of colour, one band per state from west to east. Learn to read the eras from four real strips.
- When did the South flip from Democrat to Republican?The Solid South in colour: how Southern states went from voting Democratic by 90 points to reliably Republican, told in four election strips from 1920 to 2024.
- The biggest presidential landslides, drawn in colour.Three of the most lopsided US presidential elections drawn as strips of colour, one band per state, and why each landslide holds out in a different place.
- The closest presidential elections, state by state.The most evenly fought US presidential elections since 1900 as strips of colour, and why the closest national result is not always the palest strip.
Now try naming one yourself.
Huezle is free on iPhone. A new puzzle every day, four categories free forever, and no account, ads or timer.